I would like to ask the author what â€śfire mitigationâ€ť really means. It seems to me that we are going from one extreme to another â€” no fires anywhere or in any way, which got us into the wildfire situation we are in now, and clear-cutting around a house in bad terrain (which is the usual layout for most of us), which would require a 300- to 400-foot clearing.

In my area, winds of 70 to 80 miles an hour are not unusual. The trees around my house break up the wind, and when we didnâ€™t have them, we lost our roof. Trees provide a barrier to noise from the highway, and keep down dust and dirt. They also provide shade in our hottest months and insulation in our coldest months.

Joanne Greenberg, Golden

This letter was published in the Aug. 11 edition.

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If we take your comment seriously you then would agree the land east of the Mississippi River would be mostly uninhabited

toohip

I don’t think irisman or myself lived in what used to be a “forest” here in the Denver metro area.

Amy

Denver is WEST of the Mississippi.

toohip

Joanne makes a good point about the choices of living in the forest. While on one hand fire mitigation is reasonable and responsible how much removes the total forest experience? But then there’s the argument about the choice of living in the forest and the tax payers responsibility to protect these forest dwellers under reasonable living conditions. Which squeaky wheel gets the grease? I guess if you live in a society where you want your gov’t to protect and serve, you have to obey the rules and regulations.

ThePyro

Agreed. I’d add to your last part the private side…you want insurance, you gotta play by the company’s rules. You want to play a game of risk-benefit with your private stuff (i.e., fire danger versus wind damage or road noise), then you take the consequences. People choose to live with the dangers of their environments, they have to learn to live with them, too.

holyreality

I have a client who lives in the red zone of dry desert woodlands.

His house was built next to a beautiful 300 year old Pinion Pine, his deck was built around the tree while it provides a nice shade and windbreak for the house.

I politely told him the fire marshal would demand he remove it, his response was that the tree was worth more than his house.

There is no way to quantify value in people’s decisions on their property. While I see idiocy in cedar shake roofs in hazard zones, I realize it is ignorance. It is the Architect who is the idiot.

Looking at last year’s disaster in Colorado Springs, every house that did not burn in that neighborhood had a metal roof.

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